List of Publications (Students’ names in bold)

Piazza, J. R., & Bering, J. M. (in press). Concerns about reputation via gossip promote generous allocations in an economic game. Evolution & Human Behavior.

Bering, J. M. (in press). Why hell is other people: Distinctively human psychological suffering. Review of General Psychology. [PDF]

Johnson, D. D. P., & Bering, J. M. (in press). Hand of God, mind of man: Punishment and cognition in the evolution of cooperation. In J. Schloss and A. Platinga (Eds.), The nature of belief: Scientific and philosophical perspectives on the evolution of religion.

Bering, J. M. (2008). How Sartre inadvertently presaged a proper evolutionary science of religion. In J. Bulbulia, R. Sosis, C. Genet, R. Genet, E. Harris, & K. Wyman (Eds.), The evolution of religion: Studies, theories, and critiques. Santa Margarita, CA: The Collins Foundations Press.

Bering, J. M., & Bjorklund, D. F. (2007). The serpent’s gift: Evolutionary psychology and consciousness. In P. D. Zelazo, M. Moscovitch and E. Thompson (Eds.), Cambridge handbook of consciousness, pp. 597-630. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Bering, J. M. (2007). Science will never silence God. In J. Brockman (Ed.), What is your dangerous idea? Today’s leading thinkers on the unthinkable (pp. 169-179). US: Harper Collins.

Bering, J. M. (2006). The folk psychology of souls. Behavioral & Brain Sciences, 29, 453-498. [PDF]

Bering, J. M. (2006). The cognitive psychology of supernatural belief [As reprinted from American Scientist]. In P. McNamara (Ed.). Where God and Science Meet. How Brain and Evolutionary Studies Alter Our Understanding of Religion (pp. 123-134). Westport, CT: Praeger/Greenwood.

Johnson, D. D. P. & Bering, J. M. (2006). Hand of God, mind of man: Punishment and cognition in the evolution of cooperation. Evolutionary Psychology, 4, 219-233. [PDF]

Bering, J. M. & Parker, B. D. (2006). Children’s attributions of intentions to an invisible agent. Developmental Psychology, 42, 253-262. [PDF]

Bering, J. M. (2006). The cognitive psychology of belief in the supernatural. American Scientist, 94, 142-149. [PDF]

Bering, J. M. (2006). Untitled. In J. Brockman (Ed.), What we believe but cannot prove: Today's leading thinkers on science in the age of certainty (pp. 32-35). US: Harper Collins. UK: Simon & Schuster.

Bering, J. M. & Shackelford, T. K. (2005, December). Evolutionary psychology and false confession. American Psychologist, 60(9), 1037-1038. [PDF]

Bering, J. M., McLeod, K. A., & Shackelford, T. K. (2005). Reasoning about dead agents reveals possible adaptive trends. Human Nature, 16, 360-381. [PDF]

Bering, J. M., Hernández-Blasi, C., Bjorklund, D. F. (2005). The development of ‘afterlife’ beliefs in  secularly and religiously schooled children. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 23, 587-607. [PDF]

Bering, J. M., & Johnson, D. D. P. (2005). “O Lord . . . you perceive my thoughts from afar”: Recursiveness and the evolution of supernatural agency. Journal of Cognition and Culture, 5, 118-142. [PDF]

Bering, J. M. (2005). The evolutionary history of an illusion: Religious causal beliefs in children and adults. In B. Ellis & D. Bjorklund (Eds.), Origins of the social mind: Evolutionary psychology and child development (pp. 411-437). New York: Guilford Press.

Bering, J. M., & Shackelford, T. K. (2004). Supernatural agents may have provided adaptive social information: Comment on Atran and Norenzayan. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 27, 732-733. [PDF]

Bering, J. M., & Shackelford, T. K. (2004). The causal role of consciousness: A conceptual addendum to human evolutionary psychology. Review of General Psychology, 8, 227-248. [PDF]

Bering, J. M. (2004). A critical review of the ‘enculturation hypothesis’: The effects of human rearing on great ape social cognition. Animal Cognition, 7, 201-212. [PDF]

Bering, J. M. (2004). Natural selection is non-denominational: Why evolutionary models of religion should be more concerned with behavior than concepts. Evolution and Cognition, 10, 126-137.

Bering, J. M., & Bjorklund, D.F. (2004). The natural emergence of reasoning about the afterlife as a developmental regularity. Developmental Psychology, 40, 217-233. [PDF]

Hernández-Blasi, C., Bering, J. M., & Bjorklund, D. F. (2003). Evolutionary developmental psychology: Viewing human ontogeny through the eyes of evolutionary theory (Psicología Evolucionista del Desarrollo: Contemplando la ontogénesis humana desde los ojos del evolucionismo). Infancia y Aprendizaje, 26, 267-285.

Bering, J. M. (2003). Religious concepts are probably epiphenomena: A reply to Pyysiäinen, Boyer, and Barrett. Journal of Cognition and Culture, 3, 244-254. [PDF]

Bering, J. M. (2003). Towards a cognitive theory of existential meaning. New Ideas in Psychology, 21, 101-120. [PDF]

Bering, J. M., & Povinelli, D. J. (2003). Comparing cognitive development. In D. Maestripieri (Ed.), Primate psychology: Bridging the gap between the mind and behavior of human and nonhuman primates (pp. 205-233). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. [PDF]

Bjorklund, D. F. & Bering, J. M. (2003). Big brains, slow development, and social complexity: The developmental and evolutionary origins of social cognition. In M. Brüne (Ed.), The social brain – evolutionary aspects of development and pathology (pp. 113-151). Wiley.

Povinelli, D. J., Bering, J., & Giambrone, S. (2003). Chimpanzee ‘pointing’: Another error of the argument by analogy? In S. Kita (Ed.), Pointing: Where language, culture, and cognition meet (pp. 35-68). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Bjorklund, D. F., & Bering, J. M. (2003). A note on the development of deferred imitation in enculturated juvenile chimpanzees. Developmental Review, 23, 389-412. [PDF]

Bering, J. M. (2002). Intuitive conceptions of dead agents’ minds: The natural foundations of afterlife beliefs as phenomenological boundary. Journal of Cognition and Culture, 2, 263-308. [PDF]

Povinelli, D. J., & Bering, J. M. (2002). The mentality of apes revisited. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 11, 115-119. [PDF]

Bering, J. M. (2002). ‘Ratcheting’ up the scalae naturae? Review of The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition by M. Tomasello. Journal of Cognition and Culture, 1, 353-358. [PDF]

Bjorklund, D. F., Yunger, J. L., Bering, J. M., & Ragan, P. (2002). The generalization of deferred imitation in enculturated chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes). Animal Cognition, 5, 49-58. [PDF]

Bering, J. M. (2002). The existential theory of mind. Review of General Psychology, 6, 3-24. [PDF]

Bering, J. M. (2001). Are chimpanzees ‘mere’ existentialists? A phylogenetic approach to religious origins. Evolution and Cognition, 7, 126-133.

Bjorklund, D. F., & Bering, J. M. (2002). Milestones in development. In N. J. Salkind & L. Margolis (Eds.) Child development, Vol. 1, in Macmillan Psychology Reference Series (pp. 272-275). Farmington Hills, MI: Macmillan.

Bering, J. M. (2001). Theistic percepts in other species: Can chimpanzees represent the minds of non-natural agents? Journal of Cognition and Culture, 1, 107-137. [PDF]

Bering, J. M. (2001). God is not in the mirror: A reply to Gallup and Maser. Journal of Cognition and Culture, 1, 207-211. [PDF]

Bjorklund, D. F., & Bering, J. M. (2000). The evolved child: Applying evolutionary developmental psychology to modern schooling. Learning and Individual Differences, 12, 347-373. [PDF]

Bering, J. M., Bjorklund, D. F., & Ragan, P. (2000). Deferred imitation of object-related actions in human-reared, juvenile great apes. Developmental Psychobiology, 36, 218-232. [PDF]

Bjorklund, D. F., Bering, J. M., & Ragan, P. (2000). A two-year longitudinal study of deferred imitation of object manipulation in an enculturated juvenile chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) and orangutan (Pongo pygmaeus). Developmental Psychobiology, 37, 229-237. [PDF]

Povinelli, D. J., Bering, J., & Giambrone, S. (2000). Toward a science of other minds: Escaping the argument by analogy. Cognitive Science, 24, 509-41. [PDF]